Theo's Odyssey [Hardcover]

Catherine Clement (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 13, 1999

An advanced student who loves computer games and ancient mythology, 14-year-old Theo is diagnosed with a mysterious terminal illness. But instead of withering away in his bedroom or a hospital ward, Theo is sent off to travel the world with his eccentric and enlightened Aunt Martha. Rather than a generic tour of the world's greatest sights, Theo's aunt takes him on a pilgrimage to learn about the world's greatest religions--from Sufism to Islam to Taoism to the Southern Baptist denomination of Protestantism. Clement's rich storytelling guides Theo through an informative and deeply touching journey as he begins to understand others' relationships with God, as well as his own. Beneath the surface, this is a spiritual love story, one in which the love of family, a girlfriend, and God sustains and heals a dying boy. --Gail Hudson

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

An advanced student who loves computer games and ancient mythology, 14-year-old Theo is diagnosed with a mysterious terminal illness. But instead of withering away in his bedroom or a hospital ward, Theo is sent off to travel the world with his eccentric and enlightened Aunt Martha. Rather than a generic tour of the world's greatest sights, Theo's aunt takes him on a pilgrimage to learn about the world's greatest religions--from Sufism to Islam to Taoism to the Southern Baptist denomination of Protestantism. Clement's rich storytelling guides Theo through an informative and deeply touching journey as he begins to understand others' relationships with God, as well as his own. Beneath the surface, this is a spiritual love story, one in which the love of family, a girlfriend, and God sustains and heals a dying boy. --Gail Hudson

From Publishers Weekly

Best known in this country as a Lacanian feminist scholar, Cl?mentis is also a fiction writer. Her latest work is a long novel of ideas, best described as a cross between Around the World in Eighty Days and a survey course in religion. Theo Fournay, the 14-year-old son of a biology teacher and a director of research at Paris's Pasteur Institute, is suffering from a leukemia-like disease. Willing to try anything for a cure, Theo's parents agree to let his Aunt Martha, a rich and adventurous "rolling stone," take Theo around the world in search of holiness and healing. This premise isn't quite credible: at first we're told that Theo's doctor has forbidden him to walk to the lyc?e down the street, and then, suddenly, Theo's touring the monuments of Egypt. Aunt Martha is a New Ager with political spunk (she's been banned from China for taking part in illegal demonstrations), and an unsophisticated longing for belief lurks beneath her wordly erudition. She and Theo visit the sacred places of the planetAJerusalem, Cairo, Rome, Benares, Kyoto, Bahia and even, American readers will be amused to learn, New York City (where Theo is instructed in that exotic American faith, Protestantism). To entertain Theo, who loves computer games, it is arranged that he must guess each new destination, phoning Fatou, his girlfriend in Paris, for clues. The earnestly conceived but breezily written narrative is interspersed with potted summaries of religions and cults by the various sages, rabbis, priests and priestesses Theo and Aunt Martha encounter along the way. This book will certainly be compared to Sophie's World, another novelistic popularization of abstruse philosophy. However, Cl?ment's didactic story is more cumbersome and less witty than its Norwegian predecessor.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 576 pages
• Publisher: Arcade Publishing; First US edition (October 13, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1559704993
• ISBN-13: 978-1559704991
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #321,661 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A good introduction to religion, April 21, 2000

By 

"sunshynseeker" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Theo's Odyssey (Hardcover)

As a teenager I was reluctant to read a book about the world religions. However, the colorful way in which the religions were presented, made the book more attractive and sparked an interest in religion that I otherwise wouldn't have discovered. I think that it was a good way to introduce religion as a subject to an uneducated person and served as a vehicle for further study.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A novel explaining the main world religions, September 23, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Theo's Odyssey (Hardcover)

This was one of the most fantastic books I have every read! It is far more better than 'Sophie's World', because there are practically no transitions between the plot itself and the religious facts and details! If you are curious to know something about our world's religions and you have always been bored with 'dry' religious encyclopedias, then I advise you to enjoy this oevre fantastique!

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointment, December 13, 1999

By 

P. McAbee (Virginia, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Theo's Odyssey (Hardcover)

I was very disappointed at what I had hoped would be an insightful and entertaining spiritual journey. Instead, this attempt to categorize and explain the tenets and history of the world's religion fails utterly. Full of oversimplifications, factual errors and unintelligible translations, I felt misled by the numerous comparisons to the far superior Sophie's World on the book jacket.